Quiet Friday, sneaky weekend storm

Just as Maine digs out from Thursday's Nor'easter, I'm here to tell you we have another storm to watch for this weekend. (Swing and a miss on yesterday's snowfall forecast by the way...I'm man enough to admit that. If, on Wednesday, you had allowed me to bet on a 6" over/under for Old Orchard Beach, I would have taken the under with the full balance of my bank account while adding my car as extra collateral. Coastal Front-1 Carson-0)

This next storm, slated for Saturday night/Sunday morning, won't be as large of an event for most of us, but it will still bring some accumulating snow a mere 48 hours after our last system.

Today: Mostly sunny along the coastline but cloudy in the mountains and across northern Maine. Those clouds are driven by upslope winds out of the northwest as our previous storm system departs. Temperatures will respond nicely to the sun along the coast and push into the upper 30s, but western Maine will stay in the 20s under those clouds. Northwest winds will be gusty statewide in the 25-30 MPH range.

Tonight: Mostly clear along the coast, partly cloudy in the mountains; cold everywhere. Overnight lows range from the single digits in the foothills/mountains to mid teens along the immediate coastline. The saving grace here is that the winds will settle down.

Saturday: Morning sunshine statewide will give way to increasing clouds from southwest to northeast in advance of our next storm system. Southern Maine will be clouded over by noon with north of Bangor not clouding up until 3-4 PM. Most of the day will be dry but there is a chance for some snow shower activity to develop over southern and western Maine late in the afternoon just before the sun sets. High temperatures will be in the upper 20s to low 30s.

Ok, so the deal with this storm is that it will be too far away to be a huge event. It is going to pass to the east southeast of the "benchmark" spot meteorologists use as a reference for Nor'easters. Normally that would be make it a total non-issue for us, HOWEVER the storm looks to "bomb out" (rapidly strengthen) in the Gulf of Maine allowing the northwest extent of it's precipitation shield to expand and impact Maine. The track is king here even more than usual, a shift 50 miles west and we will pick up 6", 50 miles east and we will likely see only 1-2" totals.

As it stands I've "hugged" (an insult term used by weather weenies when you latch onto one particular computer model solution) the american GFS model on this and given the coastline 3-5" of snow, inland 1-3" and then back to 3-5" in the mountains accounting for the terrain enhancement likely in this scenario. I've also created a very small 4-7" bulls eye over Downeast because they will be closest to the center of the storm based purely on the curvature of the coastline. I've posted a snowfall map of course, so that might be easier to follow.

The timing of this is such that light snow has broken out over the southern half of the state by 9 PM, with the shield of snow reaching Downeast by midnight. Snow will end by 8-9 AM from Portland south, 10 AM over central Maine and the Midcoast and noon or so over Downeast and northern Maine. It'll be a quick hitter.

By Sunday afternoon we might see a few glimpses of sun and the story from Monday through Thursday becomes the arctic chill.

Overnight lows will dip into the single digits statewide on Sunday evening and again on Tuesday night and Wednesday night. Luckily New Years Eve itself will be chilly, but not brutally cold...lows should be in the teens to low 20s.

I'm like 50 Twitter followers from becoming the first WCSH6er to break 2,000. The amount of bragging and taunting I'll do within in the newsroom will be epic; let's make it happen :-) @KeithCarsonWCSH